Two days and three nights of festive activities at High Wray Basecamp

High Wray Basecamp was built to be used and is always at it’s best when it’s full up with volunteers. This is why one of our best weekends of the year is the now traditional Fix the Fells lengthsmen’s Christmas bash. We’ve hosted this for the last four years now and this year was the biggest and best yet!

Walling on Red Nab bridleway on Friday

It all started on Thursday night. A few volunteers who live the furthest away arrived to stay over (quiet night in) and be ready for Friday’s work day drystone walling us on the Red Nab bridleway. More people arrived on Friday morning, swelling the numbers to around 15 people. We had a fine day’s walling in very mild weather, at the end of which some went home and a few more stayed over (a less quiet night in), ready for the main event on Saturday.

The volunteer army moves out!

Saturday came and more arrivals saw the volunteer army up to full strength, with 34 ‘Fix the Fellers’ heading over to Coniston to join with the South Lakes upland path team and members of the Western and Northern valley’s teams. On site, they divided to work on two sites with a smaller party fixing some leaking stone drains on one path and the bulk of the numbers working to landscape out shortcuts and plant trees on another.

Team two on the drain repair

While everyone was out having muddy footpath repair fun, we stayed back at Basecamp getting the place ready for the evening’s festivities. A full day hoovering, moving tables + chairs, cleaning and decorating gave us just enough time to be ready for the now very hungry volunteer’s return from the fells. A proper slap up Christmas dinner expertly prepared by Ian, a long standing group member, was the perfect end to a great day. This was certainly not a quiet night in!

Cheers! The well earned xmas meal

Social events are often an important part of volunteering and can really help bind a group together, so it’s great for us at the volunteer centre to be able to host things like this. It was a very cordial evening indeed, although it has to be said from past experience we’ve learnt it’s best not to plan for any work to be done on the Sunday ….